To any first timer, parking at Starship children's hospital is a monumental pain, and a major exercise in sign-following but Rebecca Mairs was cheered by these additions.
Rocking out ...
Hymns have been squeezed out of the top 10 musical choices at UK funerals, with mourners opting for contemporary songs by the likes of Ed Sheeran and boyband Westlife. Hymns such as The Lord's My Shepherd and Abide With Me — previously strong contenders in the chart compiled by Co-op Funeralcare— have been elbowed aside as Sheeran and Westlife are catapulted into the top. Supermarket Flowers — Sheeran's tribute to his late grandmother, written from the perspective of his mother — enters at No6, while Westlife jumps into the top 10 with You Raise Me Up at No8. Frank Sinatra's My Way has always held the No1 slot apart from in 2014 when Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life from the Monty Python film Life of Brian was the most popular. A quarter of the population want music played at their funeral to make people laugh. Popular rock songs chosen included Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven and Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell. (Source: the Guardian)
Mood marketing
Burger King can apparently cure your depression with their "Real Meal" Whopper boxes, labelled in different moods and colours. The fastfood chain attempted to throw shade at rival McDonald's and its Happy Meals for Mental Health Awareness Month in the US by rolling out a new campaign. "No one is happy all the time," says a Burger King ad in an obvious jab at its rival, "and that's OK." They are offering so-called "Real Meals" like the Blue Meal (sad), Salty Meal (bitter), YAAAS Meal (excited), Pissed Meal (mad), and DGAF Meal (Don't give a ****).
"My owl decoy isn't working"
Nautical neutralness
"May God bless it and all who sail in it": After someone changed the "she/her" to "it" on its expensive information signs, the Scottish Maritime Museum has decided to stick with gender neutralness and ignore centuries of naval history. Not everyone was happy. Admiral Alan West told BBC Radio: "The ships are seen almost as a mother to preserve us from the dangers of the sea and also from the violence of the enemy. To change it in this trite fashion is just absolutely stupid ... We've done it for centuries as that's how we refer to them, we have to be very careful with little tiny pressure groups that make people change things. It's a very dangerous road we are going down." But Ella Tennant, from Keele University's Language Centre, said labelling ships, countries, and other inanimate things as female could be interpreted as "slightly derogatory and patronising".
Video Pick
Maybe the most prescient bit of TV was produced in 1985, where BBC science historian James Burke explains exactly why technology has brought us to these current, turbulent times…
Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz